


Weathering

by beckalina



Category: NSYNC
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-04
Updated: 2010-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:34:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckalina/pseuds/beckalina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thunderstorms are different when you're alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weathering

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written 11/30/2001

It's the kind of night that reminds you of those stories you and your friends used to scare each other with when you were younger. The rain is falling heavily, you can hear it pounding against the roof. Lightning rips across the sky, flashes of blue light illuminating your bedroom. The wind is whipping the branches of a tree against your window, the long pieces of wood sounding like the fingers of a skeleton against the glass.

You tell yourself that there is nothing to be afraid of. It's just a thunderstorm. You've weathered hundreds of them over your lifetime. But you can't stop the sense of dread that begins to grow in the pit of your stomach. You begin to wonder if lightning will strike the tree outside of your bedroom window.

Would it catch on fire, igniting the whole house--everything you've done and everything you've earned disappearing in a flash of cool blue and a burst of hot crimson? Or would the tree fracture, crashing into the roof and landing on the very bed you lay in now--a vibrant life snuffed out by hard, unforgiving oak?

You've never thought of a storm like this, you realize. They've always been a source of fascination for you--not a source of fear and unexplainable terror. You're suddenly afraid to sleep, though your body and mind crave it. You could fall asleep and wake up engulfed in flames, or frozen in horror as the trunk of a tree descends upon you.

You begin to shake, your flesh covered in goosebumps, cold sweat coating every inch. Suddenly, nothing seems safe. The lightning flashes again, cracking across the sky in a brilliant zig-zag. The rain beats against the windowpane--shadows of the tree branches menacing on the far wall. A clap of thunder sounds almost directly overhead, and your hand covers your heart as your breathing accelerates.

You suddenly realize why this storm is so different from all of the other you've experienced. You're alone. When you were a child, you would crawl into your mother's lap and bury your head in her neck--hiding your eyes until the inclement weather had passed. Even when you grew older, you took solace in your mother's love, safe under the roof of your porch as the two of you sat and watched the storm roll in.

When you left home, you met him, and he kept you safe from the claps of thunder and the flashes of lightning. You would curl into his arms on a couch in the lounge of the bus, the staccato of your heartbeats--the soft sounds of your lips meeting together--blocking the sounds of the rolling thunderstorms.

And then he left you. On the road, you curled up in your own bunk, clutching the blanket that had always covered the both of you--and let your own sobs mask the claps of thunder and the cracks of lightning. You've only been home for a week, and tonight is the first time it's stormed.

You become conscious of the fact that you can't handle being alone during a thunderstorm. And of the fact that there's nothing you can do about it--you have to weather the storms by yourself from now on.


End file.
